NSA review group member wants to expand data collection program

A review group hand-picked by United States President Barack Obama said last week that the National Security Agency needs to reform dozens of the ways it does business. One member of that panel, however, says the NSA doesn’t do enough.

Michael Morell, the former acting director of the Central
Intelligence Agency and a member of the five-person NSA review
group compiled by Pres. Obama, said in a recent interview that
the secretive US spy agency should have its powers expanded to
collect not just telephone metadata, but email information as
well.

"I would argue actually that the email data is probably more
valuable than the telephony data," Morell told
National Journal. "You can bet that the last thing a
smart terrorist is going to do right now is call someone in the
United States."

Speaking only days after the panel sent the White House a list of
46
recommendations they’ve suggested to reign in the NSA, Morell
told the magazine that one of the agency’s biggest tools —
Section 215 of the Patriot Act — could likely “stop the next
9/11” if it is authorized to collect emails.

"I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date
is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the
future," he said. "This program, 215, has the ability to
stop the next 9/11, and if you added emails in there it would
make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and
2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened."

In a separate interview over the weekend with
CBS News reporter Bob Schieffer, Morell insisted “the NSA
is not spying on Americans” and that the agency didn’t act
out of turn as its critics have suggested.

The NSA “is not focused on any single American,” Morell
said. “It is not reading the content of your phone calls or
my phone calls or anybody else’s phone calls. It is focused on
this metadata for one purpose only, and that is to make sure that
foreign terrorists aren’t in contact with anybody in the United
States.”

And according to Morell, it’s no coincidence that there hasn’t
been a major terrorist attack waged at the US since the NSA was
awarded new abilities authorize by Congress with the passage of
the post-9/11 Patriot Act.

“And there are a lot of reasons for that, and there are a lot
of organizations and a lot of people who are responsible for
that. And the National Security Agency is one of those
agencies,” Morell added. “And because of that those —
those officers who work there are patriots and we are going to
continue to need them to do the work they do, because the threat
continues to exist. And, quite frankly, it’s possible the threat
could grow again. So that’s one very important piece of context
that — that Americans need to understand.”

The ex-acting director of the CIA also tackled the notion that
“the National Security Agency was out there on its own doing
all of these things” without sufficient oversight.

“Not the case,” insisted Morell. “It was doing
exactly what its government asked it to do. It was operating
under strict rules, provided by the executive branch and — and
the judicial branch and it was overseen extensively by the
intelligence committees on Congress. There was no abuse here.
They were doing exactly what they were told to do. I think that's
important context for people to know.”

And while Morell might insist there’s been no abuse at hand, his
four colleagues in the president’s NSA review group suggested
there was room for change.

"We recommend that, as a general rule and without senior
policy review, the government should not be permitted to collect
and store all mass, undigested, non-public personal information
about individuals to enable future queries and data-mining for
foreign intelligence purposes," reads the fourth of 46
suggestions made by the panel in the 300-plus-page report
released last week.“Any program involving government
collection or storage of such data must be narrowly tailored to
serve an important government interest.”

"We recommend that legislation should be enacted that
terminates the storage of bulk telephony meta-data by the
government under section 215, and transitions as soon as
reasonably possible to a system in which such meta-data is held
instead either by private providers or by a private third
party," the group added.

Speaking to Schiefferfor CBS’ Face the Nation, Morell agreed that
the civil liberties of innocent Americans would likely benefit
from a change recommended by his panel that would put information
now compelled by the NSA at a non-government facility, or in the
hands of the actual telecommunication company that records that
information.

“My preference is to create some sort of private consortia
that holds all of this data, and so once you have that court
order you can go to that private company and get an answer very,
very quickly,” Morell said on the program.

“We don’t think we have significantly undermined the
government’s ability to protect the country," he said.
“While at the same time we think we have enhanced privacy and
civil liberties significantly.”

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Washington, DC also said last week
that the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program was likely
unconstitutional and allowed for two plaintiffs who have sued
for an injunction to be barred from the agency’s surveillance
operations.

Speaking to journalist George Stephanopoulos this weekend, the
chairman of the US House Permanent Committee on Intelligence
suggested that he believes the court’s ruling will likely be
overturned.

“Yes, this one district judge that doesn't handle national
security cases had a difference of opinion. That's our good
system. But he set aside his own decision, as he said 'likely to
be overturned' because of the sheer volume of federal judges who
have already reviewed this... and reaffirmed that this program is
legal. It does meet the constitutional test,” Chairman Rep.
Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) told Stephanopoulos.